It’s first-and-10 for the Bombers, from the Whiteout line

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This article was published 24/05/2018 (2163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Talk about a tough act to follow.

A local professional sports team known as the Winnipeg Blue Bombers — remember them? — will raise the curtain on their 2018 CFL campaign next Friday, making their pre-season debut against the Edmonton Eskimos at Investors Group Field.

That will, of course, be less than two weeks since another local professional sports team, the Winnipeg Jets, played the last game of an electrifying playoff run that brought this city to a standstill, painted it white and changed Winnipeg from this country’s favourite punchline to a place that actually seemed pretty fun to live.

Not since Bob Marley was the warmup act in the early 1970s for a little known Ohio pop group, Limmie and the Family Cooking — yes, that actually happened — has there been a more daunting act to follow.

And yet, with the city’s whites still in the wash, the Bombers will begin their quest to finish the business the Jets started, which is to say win this city its first championship in hockey or football since 1990.

Expectations locally are higher for this team than at any time in recent memory, both because the Jets have finally excised this city’s reputation as lovable losers and because the Bombers are coming off a 12-6 season and are as talented on paper as any Winnipeg roster in recent memory.

Yet, no one outside the Perimeter Highway seems to think so — both the bookies in Vegas and a CFL media poll released this week have the Bombers battling B.C. for fourth in the West this season.

But I think that’s both giving Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatchewan too much credit and the Bombers not nearly enough.

While this roster is not without its weaknesses — they are one Matt Nichols ankle injury away from another lost season, thanks to Darian Durant — you could say the same thing about those other teams in the West, too.

The CFL is a quarterback’s league, and while Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatchewan all have more experienced backups than anything available to the Bombers, take it to the bank: those teams will also go backwards in 2018 should anything happen to Mike Reilly, Bo Levi Mitchell or, new in green this season, Zach Collaros.

You are only as good as your quarterback is healthy in this league and while the Bombers’ margin for error is more razor-thin than anyone else, there’s not a coach in the CFL who doesn’t say a little prayer before bed for his starting QB every night.

All of which brings us to the man of the hour, Mike O’Shea.

The Bombers’ head coach is in his fifth season in Blue and Gold and the team he’s been handed by GM Kyle Walters in 2018 is the deepest and most well-rounded group O’Shea has had to work with since he arrived in 2014.

The addition of linebacker Adam Bighill was, for my money, the final missing piece for a Bombers defence that — year after year after year after year — under O’Shea has consistently surrendered too much yardage.

For all the turnovers the defence has generated the last couple seasons, in my opinion it’s the miles of yards from scrimmage they have given up — a shocking amount of it on the ground — that has killed this team.

Bighill solves a lot of that. He’s big, he’s smart, he’s mean and he becomes a massive, imposing presence in the middle of the defence. Opposing quarterbacks will fear him, opposing running backs will seek to avoid him and opposing offensive co-ordinators will have to respect him on every play.

From all reports, Bighill’s decision to sign in Winnipeg — the four-time CFL all-star presumably could have signed anywhere he wanted — was born of a desire to play for O’Shea, a man he both likes and respects.

That’s been a familiar theme throughout O’Shea’s four previous seasons in Winnipeg — the players all love him.

The question now, heading into Year 5, is if the players will now also win for him and, relatedly, if O’Shea will finally get out of his own way long enough to allow them to do so.

It is worth remembering that O’Shea has yet to win a playoff game through four seasons as a head coach in a nine-team league in which six teams make the playoffs.

After missing the playoffs in each of his first two years, he has guided the Bombers to appearances in the West semifinal each of the past two seasons, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory each time.

Two years ago, it was O’Shea’s decision to go for a ridiculous 61-yard field goal in the game’s final minute that cost his team a chance to win against the Lions. Last year, it was an equally ridiculous botched third-quarter fake punt — with the Bombers in the lead — that led to an Edmonton go-ahead touchdown and a lead the Eskimos would never relinquish.

To his credit, O’Shea admitted after the Edmonton game that the fake punt was a mistake. The question now is whether he will learn from it.

There are no more excuses left for this team — or its braintrust. The ghosts of the disastrous Joe Mack era have long since been excised and with four full seasons behind them, both Walters and O’Shea have had more than enough time to put together a winner in a league in which the last two Grey Cups were won by an expansion team in just its third year of existence (Ottawa in 2016) and an Argos team last year that had finished last in the CFL the previous season and replaced its entire front office.

This city and its faithful football fans have been more than patient with the current Bombers leadership. They’ve been patient as the team worked out the kinks on their new stadium. They’ve been patient as their GM slowly rebuilt the team. And they’ve been patient as they’ve watched their head coach make the mistakes that come with learning on the job.

But five years in, you have to wonder if this is the season these guys finally take the next step or if this is the season the fans — and the team — finally move on.

Time is up — and so are the excuses.

Pro sports fans in this city got a taste of playoff success this spring. They liked it. A lot.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek